Illinois lawmakers worry about paper coupons, death carpets, stickers, beauty sleep
What pressing issues did the Illinois General Assembly consider among 6,745 bills this past session? They pondered a sticker commission, “end-of-life” carpets, paper grocery coupons, 15-year-old voters and their own beauty sleep.
The Illinois General Assembly had ample opportunity to tackle the state’s massive public pension debt, curb the nation’s top tax burden or fix the state’s finances, but what did they do instead?
They considered 6,745 bills that included creating a voting sticker commission, regulating end-of-life carpets, stopping grocery store coupons from going paperless, registering teens three years before they could vote and making sure they did not lose sleep doing their jobs.
Here are the details on five bills that lawmakers were wise enough to allow to die this year:
- Creation of a “sticker commission”
Senate Bill 1576 would have created an “I Voted” Sticker Commission. The commission would have been tasked with developing a contest to finalize 10 designs that would be used in the 2026 General Election. Any spending for this commission would be in addition to the $55.2 billion budget, sticking Illinois taxpayers with the costs.
- Death carpet seller registry
House Bill 1876 intended to implement a carpet stewardship program. The purpose of the program would be to promote and market for “end-of-life” carpet recovery and reutilization. HB 1876 would not have allowed carpet to be sold in the state of Illinois if the producer were not registered with the program.
- Sleep for Illinois state lawmakers
Senate Bill 1243 would prohibit the Illinois General Assembly from voting on any legislation between midnight and 6 a.m. Maybe a little extra sleep would have stopped them from rushing through 96 bills on their final day out of 416 total sent to Gov. J.B. Pritzker to sign into law.
- Grocery coupons must be on paper
House Bill 45 intended to regulate grocery coupons on apps and in stores. Simply put, if a grocery store were to offer digital coupons, it also would have had to provide a paper coupon of equal value to shoppers had the bill passed.
- Register to vote three years before going to polls
House Bill 3036 wanted 15-year-olds to register to vote. That would have been three whole years before they were legally able to cast a ballot. Teens already can pre-register at age 16 in Illinois. It takes less than 15 minutes to register to vote online, but that denies partisan politicians the chance to recruit teens at high schools during mass registration drives.
While these five bills died a deserved death along with nearly 94% of all the bills introduced in the Illinois General Assembly, 416 are making it to Pritzker. Lawmakers added taxpayer costs in unknown amounts with 415 of those bills and only bothered figuring out what one of those bills would cost.
Before lawmakers impose any other bright ideas on Illinoisans, best that they sleep on it.